Tag: morocco

I lead a Global Politics Club for Moroccan English language learners. The goal of the Club is to raise students’ awareness of global issues and enhance their ability to use English for academic purposes. An important component of this is teaching them how to identify accurate sources – and avoid fake news.

During yesterday’s session, I asked students whether they thought Facebook led to increased access to factual information. They were overwhelmingly positive:

“Before Facebook, we only had the TV and radio,” they said. “We didn’t hear about a lot of things that were happening. Now, we know a lot more – things that are not reported on TV.”

I understood their positivity: Morocco is ranked 133rd out of 180 on the World Press Freedom Index, and its media is considered “not free” according to the most recent Freedom of the Press report by Freedom House. When compared to the limited media that was previously available, social media has opened a wealth of information to the masses.

Unfortunately, this increased access to information does not come with a filter – neither in Morocco nor worldwide. As British journalist Christiane Amanpour mentioned in her recent TED interview, the proliferation of media outlets and their consumption on social media has led to tunnel vision whereby people focus “on areas of their own interest instead of seeing the broad picture.”

This new media interface is easily exploited for nefarious purposes. Recent events such as Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election demonstrate that social media has given the fake news industry a useful network in which to access minds ripe for the planting of information that can be advantageous to governments or other entities.

Therefore, those of us teachers looking to fight against the barrage of fake news encounter a problem: the way our students are accessing news today simply does not encourage them to stop and check its validity. In this new media environment, students need to be equipped with special skills which allow them to engage with today’s media as informed, global citizens.

So how can we teach students to think critically about the media they consume and tell the factual from the false?

The solution, in my view, is to get them in the habit of checking their sources. Below, I share a simple current event exercise that I have developed which teaches students to do just that.

Same Story, Different Sources: A Weekly Current Event Reporting Exercise

Objectives: Get students in the habit of checking their sources and point them in the direction of reliable news media outlets. Secondary objectives include improving reading comprehension and summarization skills, along with the ability to present concise summaries in class orally in their own words.

The Exercise: Have students choose any news story that interests them. Then, have them report the story by synthesizing information from three articles from three different sources:

2 of these articles must come from the “trusted brands” listed below:

BBC

The Guardian

The Independent

CNN

Reuters

Washington Post

New York Times

The Economist

NPR / PRI (National Public Radio / Public Radio International)

Bloomberg

Forbes

France 24

Financial Times

Wall Street Journal

Huffington Post

The New Yorker

The Associated Press

The Atlantic

1 source can be any news outlet of the student’s choice

Students read all three articles at home. Then, they jot down a concise summary in their own words focusing on “who-what-when-where-why-how.” I provide a Graphic Organizer that they use to help create a summary. Finally, they present their summary in their own words in class. Typically, the summary leads to a heated discussion about each current event.

Why 3 sources?

Reading the same story from three different sources allows students to observe subtle differences in reporting. Over time, students recognize the differences between the “trusted brands” and the sources they choose themselves. With repetition of this exercise, they get in the habit of checking their sources and, eventually, going to the “trusted brands” for reliable news coverage. As a secondary benefit, students who are skeptical of western media sources (yes, I have had a few of these) are not alienated, since they are free to choose their third source from whatever media outlet they like.

Results

I’ve been beginning each weekly Global Politics Club session with this exercise for about two academic years now, and my students love it. They understand the importance of checking their sources and have gotten into the habit of going to the trusted brands as opposed to their previous usual sources. They especially like that they are free to choose any story that interests them.

Discussion

I think an important element of this exercise is that it is repeated on a periodic basis. This helps students to develop a habit of checking their sources.

In my case, one caveat is that my students are middle class and upper middle class. They all have access to the internet at home. I would love to replicate this activity with students who are less media savvy to see if it would achieve the same results.

Another caveat is that I really have no idea what my students are doing as they scroll through Facebook. In other words, I haven’t measured how this exercise has impacted their social media activity. Yet, from their performance in class, I do know that they are able to identify reliable sources and think critically about the information they read. If all young people worldwide could do this, then I think the fake news industry would go out of business.

This year, I had the opportunity to witness the Moroccan Eid al Adha rituals in their entirety, including the slaughter and butchering of a sheep. On Friday, my student invited me to his house to celebrate the holiday with his family. The images of that day were to me simply beautiful, and they inspired me to write this poem:

When I found out I would be teaching ACCESS, a group of high school students receiving scholarships to study English from the U.S. Department of State, I was thrilled. I was also eager to do something I had always wanted to try with my classes: an extensive reading curriculum.

In case you aren’t familiar with the concept, extensive reading involves learners reading texts for enjoyment and to develop general reading skills. This is in contrast to intensive reading, which involves learners reading in detail with specific aims and tasks (SOURCE: The British Council).

When I examined our language center’s collection of graded readers, however, I was disappointed to find that we only had one copy per title. Despite this, I was determined to press on with a reading curriculum.

I did some research, and to my surprise, students reading different books in the same class was actually a thing. According to Dr. Diana Senechal, whose blog I fortunately stumbled upon, a Reading Class could be distinguished from a Literature Class due to its objective: while the former aimed to encourage students to read for pleasure, the latter’s goal was to facilitate student discussion of literary elements.

I was relieved that a Reading Class could be beneficial for students. What I didn’t know was that it would not only lead my students to fall in love with reading but also guide their understanding of basic literary elements – killing two birds with one stone.

Below is an outline of what I did and the results:

LEVEL: Lower Intermediate

AGE: 16 to 17 year olds

DURATION: 30 hours of instruction over a period of 2 weeks* (intensive summer session)

OBJECTIVE: Encourage a love of reading and expose students to some basic literary elements

STUDENT PROFILE: Most students had never read a book in English and had limited access to books in any language. All students went to public high schools, which provided very limited exposure to literary elements or devices within literature classes (in Arabic, French or English).

CULTURAL NOTES: In general, there is not a culture of reading for pleasure in Morocco. Most homes lack a library or bookcase, and the only books likely to be found around the house are religious texts. Books are expensive, and books in English are difficult to find – especially in Oujda, where I teach.

During Fall term, I had the opportunity to teach six classes simultaneously, my largest course load yet. As one can imagine, this gave me many chances to screw up!

Here are the lessons I learned this term:

1. Control your emotions. I had the most difficult teaching moment of my life a few weeks ago when a student said something in class that completely shocked me. I made the mistake of letting my emotions get the better of me. Next time, I will stay calm and either: 1) ask questions designed to encourage the student to think critically, or 2) move on. Teachable moments are great, but not all moments are teachable.

2. Seek the light in your students. Immediately after the aforementioned experience, I was tempted to view my students in a different way. However, a close friend advised me to “always seek the light” in your students. To me, this meant that, no matter their personal beliefs, I should always give my students the benefit of the doubt and treat them as individuals in their own right.

3. Manage class time effectively. Every moment of class time is precious. For me, it has been helpful not only to estimate in advance how long an activity will take but to also alter the time spent on each activity during class based on how students are responding. Is this too easy for them? Do they need more practice? Are they bored? It’s good to be mindful of these things.

4. Integrate writing into each lesson. I have been using composition books in all of my classes. However, I made the mistake of not using them enough. I did an average of 4-5 writing activities in each of my classes, when I should have done twice as many. Next time, I will integrate timed free writing practice into each lesson. By giving students a time limit, I will ensure that their writing does not take up too much class time.

5. Be mindful of the learning objective. I like to give my students activities that allow them to be creative and have fun while using English. However, at times, I focused so much on creativity that I lost sight of the learning objective! Each activity should have a purpose. If this purpose is not aligned with the learning objectives of the course, then the activity should be scrapped.

6. Ask students about their learning styles. At one point during a class, I had a substitute teacher fill in for me while I was attending a wedding in the States. As soon as the substitute walked in, my students launched into a tirade about my teaching: I did not use worksheets like other teachers, nor did I put enough emphasis on learning new vocabulary. Further, some students complained that I did not write down the homework answers, grammar or new vocabulary words on the board. These complaints were a surprise to me, and I am lucky that the substitute teacher relayed them to me personally. On my first day back, I gave the students a short survey so they could tell me what they liked and didn’t like about the class. Fortunately, I was able to alter my teaching style to suit their needs. I could have avoided the complaints altogether if I had given them such an assessment earlier in the term.

7. Plan the entire term in advance. I needlessly rushed through the material near the end of term for several of my classes, not realizing that we actually had extra class time that I had not accounted for! I could have avoided this if I had properly annotated all hours of class time in my calendar.

8. Know when to be the teacher. In one instance, an entire class refused to take a quiz, telling me that they were not ready. I gave in and rescheduled the quiz. However, when the same thing happened again in the same class, I knew that I needed to respond differently. I called my teacher mentor and asked her what I should do. “Give them the answers,” she said. “What?!” I had never heard of such a thing. It seemed counterproductive. However, she explained that students in Morocco were accustomed to learning by memorization. She said that by reading the entire quiz to them out loud, giving them the answers, and then giving them a fresh copy of the quiz to complete at home, I would not only be exposing them to both listening and reading of the material that they needed to master, but I would regain control of the class. I did exactly as she said, and it worked.

9. Warm-ups are essential. There were several times this term when I felt that my class was dragging along. This was especially true for my Beginning Adult English class, which met on Fridays at 3:00pm, when my students were in a carb coma after their Friday couscous. For this class, I found that using strategically-placed warm ups (at the beginning of class and after the 15-minute break), games and communicative activities (especially those featuring movement) helped “wake up” my students and ensure that they were engaged in the lessons.

10. Expect the unexpected. It is no secret that lessons often do not go as planned. Therefore, it has been helpful to me to plan extra games in case we have additional class time and bring extra worksheets just in case students need more practice. Further, carrying blank slips of paper is a great idea, as they can be used by students to write and then practice orally what they have learned with their classmates.

I am grateful for these lessons learned, and I hope that they will be useful to you too!

I had the most difficult teaching moment of my life on Tuesday. When I posed a warm-up question to the class: “If you could have dinner with any person in the world (alive or dead), who would it be?”, the first student I called on answered “Hitler.” When I brought up the 12 million people he murdered, another student said that “they deserved to die.” I was shocked and heartbroken to hear this. Moreover, I was disappointed that none of my students spoke out against what she had said.

Yet, there was a small hint of understanding – after class, one student insisted on erasing the board for me, a sign of respect. Another student invited me to a scholarship presentation ceremony that his NGO (Association Mohammed VI) was running. I later found out that he intended to honor me as a surprise by having me award one student with a merit scholarship!

Today, when I saw the class again, I proceeded with the lesson as my normal, cheery self. After class, three students told me that I was their “favorite teacher,” and one even apologized for what that student had said during the previous class. Another student offered to drive me home.

Though there is darkness in the world, I remain inspired and invigorated by the kindness of the people I meet. I remain focused on becoming a strong teacher and giving 110% to my students!

After leaving the hammam (bathhouse), the matron put a scarf over my wet hair so I wouldn’t catch a cold. In the west, headscarves have a strong religious and political connotation. However, in Morocco, they are ubiquitous and serve many purposes: from shielding a lady from a sandstorm to adding a cute accessory to finish off an outfit.

While walking home with my scarf on, I ran into my neighbors, the bakery ladies, who see me almost everyday. Even though I never wear a scarf, they recognized me instantly. I was worried I would have to explain myself, but they didn’t comment on the scarf at all. I gathered it wasn’t such a big deal after all: scarf or no scarf, I’m still me.